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Settlement Pattern of the Ninevite 5 Culture (3000-2500 BCE) from Northern Mesopotamia: Gis and Multivariate Statistics Applied to the Study of the Historical Landscape.

GARCIA-RAMIS, Francesc Xavier / SORIANO-ELIAS, Biel

The Ninevite 5 culture (Early Bronze Age) is formed by a heterogeneous assembly of sites of very varied sizes, distributed in a wide area of the northern Mesopotamian plains. Most of those settlements have not been studied from a global perspective due to modern-day political borders and unmatching scientific efforts. However, some approaches have been developed to assess this feature from a settlement pattern point of view. GIS and some statistical methods were applied to assess the role of the different geographical and political features affecting the distribution of the Ninevite 5 sites. These techniques were applied to a database elaborated through the compilation of the data from bibliographic sources of extensive survey campaigns and fieldwork. As a result, this data can be interpreted in various senses, including an incipient complex organization of the settlements, although some theoretical and methodological reviews are necessary to resolve a possible hierarchical hypothesis.

Key Words: Ninevite 5, EBA, Settlement Pattern, Northern Mesopotamia, Complexity, GIS.

Session 3. Urban and Landscape Studies: Finding Interpretative Approaches [info]